Clause 8 - The independent police complaints commission
Police Reform Bill [Lords]
9:30 am
Mr Patrick Mercer (Newark, Conservative)
I can shed light on the matter through personal experience. In August 1975, I was commanding a platoon of infantry in County Londonderry. I became involved in what was later referred to as a gun battle with the IRA. As a 19-year-old second lieutenant, that was highly exciting to me. However, on return to the police barracks—I use the phrase that the Royal Ulster Constabulary would have used at the time—I was surprised to be interviewed under caution, first by the Royal Military Police and secondly by the RUC, as if I had committed some crime. I do not believe that I had; I was carrying out my duty to the Queen, and was doing so within the law, quite rightly.
I am talking about considerably more violent times than the present. I understood that RUC officers went through a similar procedure. I bow to the experience of the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon), which in many ways is much greater than mine, although perhaps not of quite the same level. RUC officers were frequently involved in gun battles, and in the use of plastic and wooden baton rounds. When injury was inflicted, or when there was the intention to inflict injury, it ended up with officers being interviewed by the Police Complaints Authority, as it was then called. Those interviews, all of which went on their records, occurred so frequently that they became almost a matter of pride. They did them no harm; in fact, in some ways, they could have been regarded almost as a slight professional brag that the officer was involved in such difficult policing.
That force was fighting an extremely difficult enemy, and was conducting itself in a very difficult situation. To that force, such interviews were everyday occurrences. Indeed, a degree of ennui spread among the RUC officers about that understandable but, to borrow a phrase from my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins), pejorative business that they went through.
My experience with the Nottinghamshire constabulary does not suggest that the circumstances are the same. Luckily, violence such as that which I have just described does not occur often in my neck of the woods of Nottinghamshire. It might be more
frequent in Nottingham, but it does not happen often in Newark. However, there is definite resentment among officers who serve with that constabulary at the fact that, if they are involved in doing their duty to the best of their ability, often with bravery as has been said, it is put on their record that they have been in front of the Police Complaints Authority.
There is a feeling that if we have the chance to alter the name, it would be much fairer to the officers concerned if we struck the word ''Complaints'' from the title of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, and substituted it with the word ''Conduct''. If we did so, I am sure that the brave and always worthy officers in our police force would be much happier.